It's the end of a long week and the beginning of Winter Olympic madness. Don't let your smartphone or tablet get left behind—turn it into a gold-medal productivity star, or the olympic village of time-wasting games, with our favorite new apps.
Android
Beats Music
Beats Music is a promising new take on streaming music—it's curated by real human beings, not emotionless algorithms. Try the sentence mix option, where you type in your mood and what you're doing and get a mix in return. Now out on Android, the app is free, but the service is $10 a month. [Free]
EverythingMe
This smooth, clean looking launcher changes your homescreen based on time of day, location, and habits, surfacing the apps you need before you even have to go searching for them. Plus, it claims to have the fastest in-phone search tool available for Android, letting you comb through contacts, apps, and web results with just a few keystrokes. [Free]
AllCast
The joy of Chromecast, Google's TV wonder-dongle, is the ability to throw whatever you're watching on your phone or tablet to the big screen. Koushik Dutta's AllCast is the easiest way to do that. The free version limits you to 1 minute video clips or still photos; for a $5 license, you can cast to your dongle completely unfettered. [Free]
iOS
Paper
Facebook's been trying to make its mobile version special for awhile now (remember Facebook Home?), but it seems like the new Paper finally hits the mark. By focusing on news, Paper ends up looking a lot like Flipboard, and that's not a bad thing. It's not fully tweakable yet, but we figure that's coming soon. [Free]
Man, everybody wants to be a DJ these days, but who can afford it? Between the bulky equipment and the crates full of old vinyl, we're talking serious cash. Pacemaker nixes all that, letting you use your iPad as a mixer, and tapping into your Spotify and iTunes libraries for songs to chop, screw, fade, and blend. In-app purchases give you an even wider variety of effects, so you can drop the bass wherever you are. [Free]
Distiller
Exploring the wide world of whiskey can be intimidating, especially if you're presented with a fancy menu longer than your arm. Distiller asks a few questions about what you're looking for in a whiskey, and where you'll be enjoying it, and presents you with a choice selection. With expert ratings and thousands of data points, it's like a well-curated music feed, but for booze. [Free]
Reporter
There are plenty of journaling apps out there, but Reporter impresses with clean, intuitive design and a fun, unpredictable schedule. A few randomly-timed surveys pop up each day, asking you where you're at, who you're with, and what you're doing; the more you answer, the fuller your journal becomes, making it a breeze to look back on fun, interesting or notable memories you might have otherwise forgotten. [$4]
Windows Phone
Beats Music
As with the Android app above, Beats Music for Windows Phone offers you a more human feeling alternative to streaming music. Also as with the Android and iOS apps, it's $10 a month, but the cool interface and surprisingly fun sentence-driven playlist generator makes it worthwhile for the music fiend who's craving variety. [Free]
6snap
Perhaps the best Snapchat client for Windows Phone, this week's 6snap update adds new brush sizes and new memory features to the clean, slick app. If your Android and iOS friends are in on the self-destructing picture craze, this is the best way to join them. [Free]